


Take Her Life, and Your Heart Will Be Free

by AskMeNoQuestions



Category: Emerald City (TV 2016)
Genre: Episode 1x07, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 15:10:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9767540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AskMeNoQuestions/pseuds/AskMeNoQuestions
Summary: Lucas' first night at Glinda's palace. (Follows on from the end of Emerald City 1x07)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Author note: based on the trailer and promo photos for Emerald City episode 8

He'd always liked returning to Glinda's palace. After the sweat and filth of the Wizard Guard's Barracks where the unmarried soldiers spent their nights whoring, drinking and fighting, the pristine white rooms provided welcome relief.

Tonight though, the castle made him disoriented and unsteady. The bare walls left him nothing to settle his eye on, and the way the cool stone muffled sound was making his skin crawl. It was the absence of the thing, rather than the thing itself, and it occurred to him that the whole effect was uncomfortably like waking up with a blank slate for a mind.

He’d thought that sleep would be beyond him, but the cumulative weight of grief, pain, and guilt - especially guilt - had taken their toll, and he’d slipped quickly into unconsciousness before the soft slide of skin against his own had startled him awake. He was lunging for his scabbard before his addled brain caught up and stayed his hand.

It was her.

Dark waves of hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and her eyes were bright in a face that, for a time, he’d known better than his own. She was wearing a shift so light it was virtually transparent, and only the startle she gave as his sword clattered to the ground convinced him that she hadn't been conjured up by his traitorous mind.

In the cold light that emanated from the palace walls she looked like the warmest thing under the moons. From experience he knew that she was.

‘Doroth-,’ he breathed, but she stopped his mouth with her own. Heat uncoiled in his belly, a low thrum of arousal he’d become well acquainted with over the past few weeks. It had been a familiar companion since she'd returned his sword to him at Nimbo, sliding it clumsily into his belt. She'd been close enough for his to map the constellation of freckles on her face, and the scent of her had hit him like a battering ram, cutting through the pain and confusion as effectively as a knife.

Her lips were soft as he deepened the kiss. She tasted like redemption and her skin was was butter under his hesitant fingertips. It had only been a day since they'd left the farmhouse, and the force of his want surprised him. He'd thought the night they'd spent exploring each other's bodies would have quenched the fire, but he was wrong - it had fanned the flames.

Combing his fingers through the snarl of her hair he cupped her skull in the calloused palm of his hand and drew back to look at her. Her delicacy was an illusion - she was forged steel - but nevertheless he’d broken her. She hadn’t looked at him once since he’d renounced his name, instead she'd hugged her arms about herself and looked at the impenetrable walls, the floor, the witch girl they’d called Sylvie. Anywhere but him. He hadn’t anticipated how much that would hurt.

Now she was here, matching her long limbs to his. He could feel the heat radiating off her skin through the thin shift that separated them, and could see his own desire reflected in her heavy-lidded eyes.

She’d forgiven him.

Or she hadn’t, but perhaps she was as unable to resist the pull between them as he was. He’d scoured the hallways for her earlier, and found only Sylvie, bewildered and mute. The palace was a maze, doors shifting in and out of existence. He was sure Glinda was keeping him from her, and was half-thankful. He didn’t know the words to take back the hurt and wasn’t sure that he even had the right to try.

He wanted to explain that in the instant his memory had been restored he’d been cleft in two. Roan and Lucas: two names, two histories, two hearts. But now, hearing her breathless gasp as he drew her under him and slipped his thigh between her own, he could feel the two knitting back together. Roan and Lucas, with a history that included her, and a heart that wouldn’t ever be whole as long as they were apart.

'I want-’ he tried, his voice gruff. 'I need-’

She stopped his mouth with the same cool fingers she'd pressed to his lips the night before; laughingly smothering his hoarse cry as they’d made love quietly, trying not to wake the sleeping child.'I know,' she said, simply.

He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder, grinding himself against her once, twice, as she arched up to meet him.Palming her breast in his hand he took the pebbling nipple between his lips, the shift rough against his tongue, and she gasped again - louder this time - 'Roan.’

The _wrongness_ of that name spoken in her low voice curdled the desire in his veins and he looked up, quickly enough to see her brown eyes flash blue as the witch’s glamour slipped.

Glinda. The rage swept through him like wildfire, and before he knew it his hands were around her neck, squeezing for a moment before he tore himself away to stare disbelieving at her, from the end of the bed.

How dare she take that form. How dare she corrupt his memory of that one night he’d spent with Dorothy in his arms. Moments he hadn’t known he needed to hoard until it was too late.

'Not her,’ he ground out. When her brow creased in confusion he roared ‘NOT HER!’ and watched as the illusion melted away, leaving Glinda, pale hands at her throat, looking up at him.

He turned his back on her, wrenching his clothes on before sitting numbly down on the foot of the bed with his head in his hands. He heard her sigh heavily, and when he looked up she was standing in front of him, fastening her gown.

'I’m sorry,’ she said. 'I misunderstood the nature of your attachment.’

He nodded mutely. She would be sorry, but she wouldn’t ever understand. It was just a game to her, a new face like all the new faces that had come before it. Even he didn’t know her real face, but he knew it was unlikely to be the one she usually wore.

She gestured helplessly at the bed, 'I thought you wanted…’

'I did,’ he managed.

'But not like that.’

'No.’

She sighed again, but after a beat cast him a coy glance from under lowered lashes, and set herself down by his feet, winding her arm through his knee. 'What if I…’ and her eyes began to turn grass green, her cheeks plumping.

'No.’

A flash of irritation crossed her face as she rose to her feet again. 'It’s impossible, you know.’

'I do.’

Unexpectedly her eyes filled with tears, and he felt his heart plummet. For years he'd been the closest thing she’d had to a friend, sharing her hopes for the future as eagerly as he’d shared her bed. But then Dorothy had come, plummeting from the sky, and nothing would ever be the same.

‘So that’s it?’ she asked him, and he could hear the grief in her voice so he took her hands to draw her down to sit next to him on the bed.

‘I’m sorry’ he said, and hoped that she knew it to be true.

‘She won’t forgive you,’ she said cruelly, and he knew her well enough to recognize the moment of sharp pleasure she took from the shudder of pain that went through him.

‘Probably not,’ he admitted. ‘She’s been hurt before. I’m not sure I deserve forgiveness.’ He took a deep breath, 'I have to try though. Without her, I'm... nothing. She's my heart. I can't fight without my heart. I'm no good to you, to the cause. I'm no good to anyone.'

He saw the moment she decided, the cold calculation in her eyes as she twisted her wrist and drew a jeweled dagger from the air. She drew it from its sheath and presented it to him, hilt first. The answer seemed clear to her:

‘Take her life,’ she told him. ‘Take her life and your heart will be free.’


End file.
